“Everything she sees feels as if it’s pinned to the day the way etherized butterflies are pinned to a board” (141).
Cunningham uses this comparison to give both the scene and Mrs. Brown’s character a morbid mood. The analogy Cunningham uses here creates the image of a lifeless, dead day. The day is even unnaturally dead since the butterflies are “etherized” or put to sleep with anesthetic and then “pinned to a board” which kills them. This process of death is not natural. This analogy creates a somber mood and it plays up the negative effect that Mrs. Brown has on other characters such as Richie since she is the principle cause of his suicide. Cunningham chose to use this particular analogy not only because it created the appropriate mood for the scene but because catching butterflies was something that Virginia Woolf did in her actual life. When she was a child, she would spread syrup on trees causing butterflies to get stuck when they tried to land on the trunk. She would then spread the butterflies out on cork boards and pin them there. Cunningham uses this moment as a way to bring more of the actual Virginia Woolf into his writing.
Works Cited:
Nicolson, Nigel. “Virginia Woolf.” The New York Times. 2000. The New York Times Company. 3 Oct. 2010 <http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/n/nicolson-woolf.html>.
Photo Credit:
"Monarch Butterfly Pictures." Fohn.net. Web. 25 Oct. 2010 <http://fohn.net/monarch-butterfly-pictures/>.
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